A known plug connector of this kind, used, for example, in accordance with German Patent No. DE 33 10 477 A1 in an electrical device, has a plurality of contact elements which, for space reasons, are arranged in multiple rows and each contact element is staggered with respect to the other, transverse to the longitudinal extension of the row.
When the contact sections of the contact elements--which in this case are rectangular in cross section, flat and elongated, and tapered at the free end--are configured as so-called blades, the manufacture of contact elements proceeds from a metal plate whose thickness corresponds to that of the contact sections, since for stability reasons the thickness of the contact sections governs the dimensioning of the contact elements.
The contact elements are formed out of the metal plate by means of a punching operation and optionally a bending operation, constituting a punched grid. They are largely separated from one another by punched gaps which correspond to the later lateral spacings within a row of contact elements. The contact elements are nevertheless still defined in terms of their mutual positions, by means of crosspieces that can later be removed, as a one-piece, easily handled punched grid for a row of contact elements. One punched grid is required for each row of contact elements, and multiple punched grids must be assembled into a contact set for the plug connector.
Only after all the contact elements of the contact set have been partially injection pre-embedded in plastic, the plastic injection pre-embedding having the function of a contact support, are the crosspieces removed and the contact elements electrically separated from one another. These manufacturing steps are cost-intensive and require simplification.
When one or more such plug connectors are introduced into a housing of an electrical device as an integrated connector, by final injection embedding in plastic, and when the functions of the control unit are implemented by means of hybrid circuits or multi-chip modules (MCMs), it may happen, if the electrical device has a large number of functions, that the size of the unit is no longer determined by its circuit elements, but by the number of contact elements. This must be prevented.